This invention is generally in the field of controlling the process of semiconductor manufacture, and relates to an apparatus and method for in-situ endpoint detection during various processes applied to semiconductor wafers, such as Chemical-Mechanical-Polishing (CW), Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), etching, photolithography, and others.
The manufacture of semiconductor articles, such as wafers, consists of forming various materials layers and structures of certain different thicknesses. Usually, this process includes deposition and removal of different materials using such techniques as CMP, CVD, etching, photolithography, etc. An important step in these procedures is terminating the process after the desired thickness is reached. For example, when dealing with CMP or etching, this process should be terminated after the layer being etched or polished is removed (e.g., partly removed such that a required remaining thickness of this layer is reached), or before the next, underlying layer is removed. A technique of determination of that process point at which the processing should be stopped is called xe2x80x9cendpoint detectionxe2x80x9d.
The term xe2x80x9cprocessingxe2x80x9d used herein signifies at least one of the following: removing an uppermost layer or depositing a layer of a different material onto the wafer""s surface. An endpoint detector serves to determine whether the desired thickness of the layer being removed or deposited is reached, aimed at terminating the removing or deposition process. In most cases, the process is terminated in response to a predetermined signal generated by such an end-point detector (or a plurality of such detectors).
CMP is a known process aimed at the planarization of the surface of the uppermost wafer""s layer. CMP is basically a mechanical polishing of the wafer""s surface using a pad pressed against the wafer, rotating one with respect to the other, all in a chemical liquid environment, which enhances the polishing. Like any semiconductor process step, tight control of the CMP process is required to maintain high yield levels. The polishing removal rate, which is the main process characteristic, is a complex function of different parameters which are partly controlled or understood. These dependencies, when combined with requirements for high uniformity levels and tight process reproducibility and control, dictate intensive thickness measurement procedures, notably in oxide polishing that has no natural end-point. As a result, monitoring systems and methods are a crucial part of the CMP process.
Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and etching are two other major sub-processes in the semiconductor production. The former is aimed at depositing thin films (e.g., oxides, metals) on a semiconductor wafer, whereas the latter is aimed at patterning thin films according to a developed three-dimensional image on the films. In a similar manner to CMP, both CVD and etching are influenced by various parameters, and should therefore be tightly monitored and controlled in order to achieve the set targets of the process. As for the photolithography technique, similar processes, namely, photoresist coating (e.g., by spinning) and photoresist development (i.e., selective removing by etching) take place during the photoresist processing step.
The following are three major techniques used for controlling one of the above processes of semiconductor manufacture, discussed with respect to CMP:
(1) Stand Alone (SA) Systems
SA systems is-are installed outside the production line (xe2x80x98off-linexe2x80x99) and wafers to be measured by this system are supplied thereto from the production line after the wafer processing is completed. The known SA systems for CMP are OptiProbe 2500, commercially available from ThermaWave, USA, and UV1250, commercially available from KLA-Tencor, USA. SA systems have excellent capability to provide full and accurate information concerning the measurement parameters. However, SA systems suffer from several drawbacks such as lag in response time, large foot-printing, and clean room and additional handling of wafer issues.
(2) In-situ Detectors
These are various sensors (optical, electrical, mechanical, etc.) which are installed in the working area (situ) of the processing tool (e.g., the area between the wafer and the rotating pad of the polisher) and are capable of real-time detecting the process end-point (e.g., motor current) and of continuously detecting the product parameters (e.g., thickness) and both product and process parameters (e.g., removal rate). Such an in-situ end-point detector (EPD) to be used with CMP equipment is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,433,651. The end-point detector comprises a window, which enables in-situ viewing of the polishing surface of the workpiece from an underside of the polishing table during polishing. Reflectance measurement means are coupled to the window on the underside of the polishing table. A prescribed change in the in-situ reflectance corresponds to a prescribed condition of the polishing process.
EPD reduces the time required to qualify a process, and shortens conditioning time whenever pads are replaced. EPD are mainly used in processes such as plasma etching. The known EPD tools for CMP are models 2350/2450 Endpoint Controllers, commercially available from Luxtron, Santa Clara, USA, and ISRM, commercially available from Applied Materials, Santa Clara, USA.
Unfortunately, EPD suffers from the following drawbacks: When applying the CMP to dielectric layers (which is a so-called xe2x80x9cblind stopxe2x80x9d process), additional frequent post-polish measurements on SA systems are needed. This is associated in the following. The EPD sensor is located in the interior of the processing area, and measures average data over a relatively large area comprising different and variable patterns. As a result, it cannot provide information concerning local planarization, and is therefore less informative as compared to an SA tool. The average data generated by the EPD does not allow for mapping the wafer""s plan, whereas the latter may be of high importance. Additionally, the interpretation of in-situ sensor data is complex and less accurate, since it is also affected by irregular environment characteristics such as electrical noise, slurry, mechanical movement, etc. The in-situ EPD has low accuracy due to low optical resolution and strong signal dependency on wafer""s pattern.
To demonstrate problems arising from the detection of the layer""s end of polish with an in-situ EPD, reference is made to FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 1 illustrates a common structure, generally designated 1, of stack layers on a semiconductor wafer W, which structure is to be polished. The structure 1 contains a silicon substrate 2, a Silicon Nitrate layer (Si3N4) 4, and a top Silicon Oxide layer (SiO2) 6. FIG. 2 illustrates possible signal time changes determined by an EPD sensor during the CMP process applied to the two upper layers 4 and 6. In this example, the part A presenting a substantially xe2x80x9cflatxe2x80x9d graph indicative of slow signal variations corresponds to the signal detected from the upper Silicon Oxide layer 6 being polished. When the layer 6 is almost completely removed, a varying signal (part B) is detected, which changes faster with the layer""s disappearance. At last, when the Silicon Nitrate layer 4 is being polished, a substantially slow changing signal is observed (part C). The signal boundaries between the parts A and B, and B and C are not sharp and clear. Hence, simple threshold-based signal analysis may cause failures, either because of xe2x80x9cearly detectionxe2x80x9d (the layer to be polished is not sufficiently removed) or because of xe2x80x9clate detectionxe2x80x9d which means that the undesirable removal of the lower layer has started.
The main difficulty in obtaining high accuracy in optical EPD is signal dependency on wafer pattern, since EPD spot size includes a lot of features with different layers structure. The effect may be stronger than signal change during polishing. There is great variety of approaches aimed at increasing the accuracy of the endpoint detection. U.S. Pat. No. 5,910,001 discloses a method and apparatus for in-situ monitoring, using multiple process parameters. This technique utilizes analyses of the multiple process parameters and statistical correlation of these parameters to detect changes in process characteristics, such that the endpoint of the etching process may be accurately detected. Another improved endpoint technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,964,980. Here a fitted endpoint system provides normalizing the current endpoint curve generated from the series of multi-bit digital code words for a wafer being etched with respect to the standard endpoint curve and providing a normalized current endpoint curve.
However, none of the known EPDs provides required measurement performance, equal or similar to SA measurement tools.
(3) Integrated Monitoring (IM) Technique
An integrated monitoring tool (IMT) is installed inside or attached to the process equipment (PE), at a location where a wafer can be monitored immediately after completion of the process, while still within the internal environment of the PE (i.e., xe2x80x98in-linexe2x80x99 monitoring). Wafers are supplied to the IMT by the PE""s robot. IMT can be used for a CMP (e.g., integrated thickness monitoring (ITM) tool such as ITM NovaScan 210, commercially available from Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd., Israel), etching and CVD processes. The IMT combines the performance of a SA tool with short time-to-respond of usually one wafer delay only, i.e., not much longer than the real-time response of an EPD. Consequently, an IMT has advantages over SA tool and provides additional important information, as compared to the EPD system, with practically no performance loss. These advantages are emphasized with respect to the ITM apparatus:
The ITM measurement unit provides thickness measurement data for every product wafer, hence, enabling fast feed-back or feed-forward control of the CMP. Measurements are carried out in parallel to processing the next wafer(s), thus, there is no affect on PE throughput.
Some known techniques utilizing the principles of ITM for closed-loop control are disclosed in the following articles: xe2x80x9cDielectric CMP Advanced Process Control Based on Integrated Thickness Monitoringxe2x80x9d, VMIC Speciality Conference, Santa Clara, 1997; and xe2x80x9cOxide Chemical mechanical Polishing Closed Loop Time Controlxe2x80x9d, CPIE, Vol. 3882, Santa Clara, 1999.
Although such problems as the wafer handling, clean room space and labor needed for SA tools operations are completely eliminated in the ITM, the latter still does not give a real-tune response, but rather a post-factum measurement of the CMP process, and cannot eliminate the problem of different thicknesses of the processed layer that might happen during processing of at least one wafer.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,658,183 and 5,730,642 disclose a specific system for polishing a semiconductor wafer, wherein the ITM tool (NovaScan 210) and an in-situ detector are used. The in-situ detector is aimed at controlling various process parameters, while the end-point detection aimed at determining whether the polishing of the wafer is complete is performed by interrupting the polishing process and performing repetitive measurements with the ITM tool. It is evident that this technique does not provide real-time endpoint detection.
There is accordingly a need in the art to improve the control of various semiconductor-manufacturing processes by providing a novel apparatus and method capable of accurately and efficiently detecting the process end-point.
It is a major feature of the present invention to provide such a method and apparatus that combine the benefits of both EPD and IT techniques to be used in CMP, CVD, etching and other processes.
The main idea of the present invention consists of applying both EPD and IT to an article (e.g., semiconductor wafer) under processing and analyzing signals generated by them to detect accurately the end-point of the article processing. For analysis purposes, an apparatus according to the invention utilizes a data processing unit, which determines relevant process parameters for a specific processing tool configuration and the parameters of the wafer being processed by this tool, to make a decision (signal) indicative of the completion of the processing of this specific wafer. Different types of EPD could be used, which may depend on the specific process, e.g., optical, electrical, mechanical, etc. detectors.
The present invention can be used with any type of integrated tool. As indicated above, the term xe2x80x9cintegrated toolxe2x80x9d (IT) signifies an apparatus, which is physically installed inside a processing tool arrangement or attached thereto, so as to be outside the working area defined by the processing tool, and which enables the measurement performance to meet the requirements of accuracy and repeatability over the whole wafer surface. The IT is usually designed in accordance with the construction and operation of a specific processing tool, and articles (wafers) are preferably transferred to the IT (for e.g., monitoring, metrology, inspection, etc.) by the same robot, used in the processing tool.
There is thus provided, according to one aspect of the present invention, a method for monitoring a process sequentially applied to a stream of substantially identical articles by a processing tool, so as to terminate the operation of the processing tool upon detecting an end-point signal corresponding to a predetermined value of a desired parameter of the article being processed, the method comprising the steps of:
(i) processing the article with said processing tool;
(ii) upon completing the processing of said article in step (i) in response to the end-point signal generated by an end-point detector continuously operating during the processing of said article, applying integrated monitoring to the processed article for measuring the value of said desired parameter;
(iii) analyzing the measured value of the desired parameter, and determining a correction value to be used for adjusting said end-point signal corresponding to the predetermined value of the desired parameter for terminating the processing of the next article in the stream.
In step (ii), the end-point signal may be set during the processing of a first article in the stream of articles. The end-point signal may be a predetermined spectrum of light returned from the article. The desired parameter may be a thickness of at least an uppermost layer of the article, in which case the integrated monitoring is capable of thickness measurements.
Preferably, the determination of the correction value comprises the following steps:
determining the difference between said predetermined value of the desired parameter and said measured value;
determining the ratio of said difference to the processing rate, to determine a time period on which the time processing of the article should be changed to obtain said predetermined value of the desired parameter;
determining the value of the end-point signal corresponding to the changed processing time to be used for correcting the end-point signal for processing the next article.
The difference between the predetermined value of the desired parameter and the measured value may be determined for at least two articles, and either an average difference value or an accumulated difference value be used for determining the ratio.
The processing may be CMP, CVD, etching, photolithography, etc., using a corresponding processing tool. The stream of articles may be semiconductor wafers progressing on a production line.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an end-point detection system for use with a processing tool which is to be sequentially applied to a stream of substantially identical articles, the system comprising:
(1) an end-point detector accommodated within a working area defined by the processing tool when applied to the article;
(2) an integrated monitoring tool accommodated within said processing tool outside said working area and capable of measuring a desired parameter of the article; and
(3) a control unit associated with the end-point detector and with the integrated monitoring tool, the control unit being responsive to data coming from the end-point signal for terminating the processing of the article, and to the measured data coming from the integrated monitoring tool, so as to analyze these data and determining a correction value to be applied to the end-point signal corresponding to a predetermined value of said desired parameter of the article achieved by the processing thereof.
Preferably, the end-point detector utilizes optical means. The integrated monitoring tool may be of a kind capable of spectrophotometric measurements. The control unit may be a common device coupled to the end-point detector and to the integrated monitoring tool, or composed of several separate devices, for example, one being associated with the end-point detector and the integrated monitoring tool, and the other being a constructional part of the processing tool.
According to yet another aspects of the present invention, there are provided a novel CMP tool arrangement, CVD tool arrangement, etching tool arrangement, and photolithography tools arrangement.